Stage Career
He began his stage experience at the theatre club next to Bournemouth's Palace Court Hotel, where he was a last-minute cast replacement in The Beaux' Stratagem. Gray surprised everyone, including himself, with the quality of his performance.
When Gray moved away from Bournemouth in the late 1950s, his parents remained at the family home until their deaths. On becoming a professional actor he had to change his name, as there was already an actor named Donald Gray. He chose Charles Gray partly because Charles was the name of his maternal grandfather, partly because he had a close friend named Charles, and partly because he thought it sounded nice. For his first appearance on Broadway, in the 1961 musical Kean, he went under the name Oliver Gray.
Read more about this topic: Charles Gray (actor)
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